Welcome Wishes for Ambassador Dirk Wouters

Faleiro wishes a warm welcome to His Excellency Dirk Wouters, Ambassador Exemplary & Plenipotentiary for the Kingdom of Belgium to the United States. Having arrived in August, he presented his credentials to President Obama on 16 September.

This is not Ambassador Wouters first experience in the United States. From 1995 – 2000 he was posted in New York where he held the position of Deputy Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations, where he was involved in the development of the International Criminal Court and participated in the Open-ended Working Group of the General Assembly on the Reform of the Security Council.

Most recently Ambassador Wouters was the Permanent Representative of Belgium to the European Union. Prior to that he held the position as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Foreign Affairs where he was one of the main architects of the successful Belgian EU-Presidency and key foreign policy decisions on Afghanistan and Libya. In 2009 he was the diplomatic advisor to then Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy (who later went on to become the first president of the European Council).

Mr. Wouters has B.A. in law and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Antwerp. He also has an M.S. in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Master of Law from the University of Louvain.